Participative leadership effects on followers’ radical creativity: the role of psychological safety and collaborative relationship

Abstract

This study indicates that there is still a limited number of studies that examined the nexus among participative leadership (PL), follower’s psychological safety (FPS), followers’ radical creativity (FRC), and collaborative relationship (CR) in the manufacturing sector of emerging economies. This paper emphasizes the importance of FPS and business collaboration to promote FRC and sheds new light on manufacturing stakeholders’ involvement. That is why this research aims to investigate the relationship between PL and FRC, including the mediating effect of FPS. Additionally, CR functioned as a moderator in the connection between FPS and FRC. This study applies the social information processing (SIP) theory as the theoretical background by bringing the dynamics between leaders and followers to the current scholarly discourse. A quantitative survey was conducted through a structured questionnaire from the samples, including 82 leaders and 240 followers from 178 manufacturing companies from all parts of Bangladesh. The researchers in this study employed SPSS for the descriptive statistics and PLS-SEM to evaluate the anticipated connections. Moreover, the quantitative results showed that PL has a positive and substantial relationship with both FPS and FRC (β = 0.25, t-statistics = 5.67, P < 0.001). Additionally, FPS has a mediation effect on the link between PL and FRC (β=-0.12, t-statistics = 22.59, P < 0.001) On the other hand, it has been found that the collaborative relationship’s moderating influence is insignificant (β = 0.29, T-values = 0.66, SE = 0.0000031). This study clarifies how PL and FPS develop the FRC in Bangladeshi industrial firms. This study contributes to the literature by highlighting how organizations can promote FRC among their followers, foster PS through CR, and motivate individuals to actively participate in FRC endeavors to boost organizational productivity and effectiveness.